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Spontaneous Poetics - 98 (Vachel Lindsay)
[Vachel Lindsay 1879-1931]AG: Vachel Lindsay.. Vachel Lindsay, and his attempts at a social poetry (in the sense of "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread"). (He was) a wandering minstrel (as in an older...
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Spontaneous Poetics - 99 - ( "Signifying Monkey",Lindsay & Poe)
AG: I began reading a book called Deep Down In The Jungle. Does anybody know that? It's a compilation of street poetics in the United States, used by black people. Particularly, there's one song.. one...
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Spontaneous Poetics - 101 (Australia - 2)
[Tutuma Tjapangati (19o9-1987) - One Old Man's Dreaming (1971) Student: Did the Aborigine's have, (as) a Creation Myth, that they originally came from New Guinea, or is New Guinea just a h(e)aven...
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Spontaneous Poetics 100 - (Australia - 1)
[Wandjuk Marika (1927-1987) - (and his father, Mawalan Marika's"Djan'kawu Creation Story")] AG: Phil Whalen began with some basic poetics, as far as I understand. I looked over his notes. [Allen had...
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 134
[Allen Ginsberg - Photograph by Alain Dister - via "Beat Generation/Allen Ginsberg" at ZKM] Big Allen-celebration in San Francisco this evening, Beat Reunion For more details here. The current...
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1968 Beat Exorcism
Thelma Blitz's dutiful documentation of The Fugs and, most particularly, the late great Tuli Kupferberg, we mentioned yesterday. Here's a montage by her to audio of a fabled and curious event - the...
View ArticleFugs Howl
And here's one more from the Thelma Blitz Tuli Kupferberg/Fugs archive trove - "I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation Rot", The Fugs lively 1966 musical interpretation of Allen's classic"Howl" (which...
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Spontaneous Poetics - 102 (Mayakovsky)
[Vladimir Mayakovsky(1893-1930)] AG: There's another development, in the 20th Century, of social poetry, in Russia, with Mayakovsky - poetry that was meant to be read in communal circumstances, like in...
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Spontaneous Poetics -103 - The Blues Intro - 1
AG: Another current aspect of communal poetics that I also wanted to touch on ... is an American form, which began in improvisation, basically, I’m told, an iambic pentameter line. The rhyme scheme...
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Spontaneous Poetics - 104 The Blues Intro - 2 (12-Bar Blues)
[Allen continues with his Blues class, reading out the lyrics (or, more accurately, one set of lyrics) for Richard "Rabbit" Brown's classic, "James Alley Blues"] "... (times ain't now) nothin' like...
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Spontaneous Poetics - 105 - The Blues Intro - 3 ( & Come All Ye's)
AG: Well it was the dream, it was the possibility of actually saying what I thought. Well, in any kind of poetry, like in "Howl", or "Kaddish", or later poems, but also in the Blues form. Since,...
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Friday Weekly Round-Up - 135
[Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) photographed by Alexandr Rodchenko, 1924]Mayakovsky's Birthday today. We'll alert you to some of our earlier Mayakovsky postings - here, here, and here.Michael...
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Peter Orlovsky & Jackson MacLow 1975 Naropa reading (with harmonious...
Continuing with our choice selections from the remarkable Naropa Institute Archives. Here's Peter Orlovsky and Jackson MacLow from 1975. (Allen, accompanying himself on harmonium, chooses to improvise/...
View ArticleSpontaneous Poetics - 106 - (Blues - 1 - Ma Rainey & Bo Carter)
AG: I don't know when these were recorded. I think late (19)20's, or early (19)30's. And there are a lot of famous musicians on (here). I think (Louis) Armstrong has got that trumpet. (From the) same...
View ArticleSpontaneous Poetics - 107 - (Blues - 2 - Nellie Florence)
AG: "Jacksonville Blues" - this is Nellie Florence- Direct sexual content, with tremendous poetry and humor. I guess the need for finding a substitute language to satisfy white ears also was an...
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Spontaneous Poetics - 108 (Blues - 3 - Allen Ginsberg)
Student: Are all those (records you played) available on Harry Smith's anthology?AG: No - The "James Alley Blues" is, Richard "Rabbit" Brown singing. The "C.C.Rider" and "Jelly Bean Blues", both by Ma...
View ArticleArabic America
We featured this past July 4, Allen's still-surprisingly-relevant 1956 poem, "America".Here's Moroccan poet & scholar, El Habib Louai's, Arabic translation. He is currently working to translate...
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 136
[Allen Ginsberg's old shoes (a pair of sneakers made in then-communist Czechoslovakia) and aletter from Lawrence Ferlinghetti - part of the Allen Ginsberg Archives at Stanford University]An interesting...
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Voices and Visions and Whitman
In preparation for some words on Whitman from Allen coming up next week Walt Whitman presented for the American public in 1988 in the television series, "Voices and Visions". Allen appears alongside...
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Spontaneous Poetics - 109 - Whitman 1
[ Walt Whitman (1819-1892)][Allen's July 26, 1976 Naropa lecture (Spontaneous and Improvised Poetics) continues.Today, he moves the subject on to Walt Whitman]AG: But I was getting up to what happens...
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